11 Thought-Provoking Quotes from Spiritual Teachers

I would like to share with you the following quotes from some of the best spiritual teachers I know. (Warning: reading them may change the way you view reality – forever.)

Our lives are based on certain assumptions created and taught by society. However, are these assumptions actually correct? Let’s take a minute to turn some “common wisdom” upside down. Some wise spiritual teachers tell us that we are in fact wrong about many of the assumptions that we base our lives on. Try to read this with an open mind, you may be pleasantly surprised and inspired.

You don’t need to be loved

“There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.” – Anthony de Mello

You don’t need anything to be happy

“To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy except self-knowledge is wisdom.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you have negative feelings something is wrong with YOU

“Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.” – Anthony de Mello

“Let’s suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or you? What’s causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? When you bump your knee against a table, the table’s fine. It’s busy being what it was made to be – a table. The pain is in your knee, not in the table. The mystics keep trying to tell us that reality is all right. Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. We might add: in the stupid, sleeping human mind.” – Anthony de Mello

You are not a person

“You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are nobody

“Feel the space in you when you are nobody, nothing. When you never ever gonna be something. Get over it! It’s like, if people think you are mad, they leave you alone. And then you can do all kind of things. You can pee in the street and everything. Oh it’s just John he is mad.” – Mooji

You were never born

“Inquire, investigate, doubt yourself and others. To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions; if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate. Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd – both logic and experience contradict it.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are neither bad nor good, you just are

“There is only one thing better than, you know, ‘I’m bad’ or ‘I’m good.’ And that’s ‘I am.’ Only something as insane as a human being would ever ask themselves if I’m good. You don’t find oak trees having existential crisis. ‘I feel so rotten about myself. I don’t produce as many acorns as the one next to me.’ – Adyashanti

Experience is the denial of Reality

“Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You don’t use your mind it uses you

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.” – Eckhart Tolle

You need nothing

“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all, abandon all self-identification; stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual; abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now- you need absolutely nothing.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Thibaut Meurisse is the founder of whatispersonaldevelopment.org. Obsessed with improvement, he dedicates his life to finding the best possible ways to durably transform both his life and the lives of others. Visit his website to download his free e-book “The 5 Commandments of Personal Development”.